War on Drugs

r Alyssa Gilbert

Drugs & Society

Dawn S. Tarabochia

The War on Drugs

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War on Drugs

Richard Nixon started the war on drugs in 1971; he declared the drug problem to be a national emergency. One of the initial problems with drugs started when the soldiers came home from the Vietnam War addicted to Heroin. In an attempt to control the problem, Nixon went hard to work in an attempt control the “problem”. In 1973 Richard Nixon created the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to form a group with a single goal to combat the drug problem. At the time the budget was less than $75 million and has increased dramatically today.

The War on Drugs is costing us a substantial amount of money every year and are we even winning? My opinion is that we are not winning. Of course I don’t think severely harmful drugs, like Meth, should be legalized but there are many things being done that are not in the best interest of everyone. We are spending extensive amounts that could be used to better schools and other organizations in need. Over sixty percent of the people in prison are there for victimless, non-violent crimes and do you honestly think they are not finding ways to obtain drugs and other substances while in prison? Yes, the government says they are winning the war on drugs especially in the cocaine industry but really there is so many users I don’t see how the government can really say they are winning.

The next issue is the fact that marijuana is illegal; there has been no scientific evidence that marijuana is harmful in any way. When people smoke marijuana there is not a large change in their personality especially compared with alcohol. I find it very interesting that tobacco and alcohol are legal and have been proven to be harmful and cause many deaths and yet there is no record of anyone dying from marijuana and it is illegal. Also, the fact that people with serious pain are able to get a green card to possess some marijuana proves that...